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10 Things I Learned From Being Hacked

1. A bottle of Jack Daniels doesn’t bring your site back to life.

2. Don’t take it personally. Boy, did I take it personally. “Why me?” “What did I do to deserve this? I was only trying to share with others.” And so on.

3. It’s usually some dumb-ass kids in Canada, with nothing better to do on a Saturday.
[We know who you are James and Max!]

4. It sucks.

5. Don’t be so dramatic. Yeah RIP was a bit strong.

6. It’s good to surround yourself with people smarter than you. Like the kind of people who can resurrect a site. They can and we will! Just give me some time.

7. Be nice. Most hosting companies do back up the server. My hosting company didn’t have the best customer service to deal with this problem. They basically said I should’ve backed it up and it’s a pain in their arse to get me a back up. So I was very nice to the customer support person–who was clearly somewhere in the Baltic States, I promised a new pair of Levi’s and now, I have a ‘back-up’ on the way.

8. Back up. Even without my hosting, I do have a back-up! This is where #6 came in handy. A very smart friend of mine, who I added as an ADMIN to my site, was smart enough to install a Wordpress plug-in http://www.ilfilosofo.com/blog/wp-db-backup/ that automatically backs-up the database and then emails a copy. My friend had been doing this without me knowing, THANK GOD. He’s been on vacation, just got back and said, “Dude, why so dramatic–see #5–I have your database right here!” And he emailed me the copy.

9. Revenge can be sweet. This is where Mr. T and Mrs. V [keeping their names private for security reasons ha ha] come into play. No matter how hard a hacker tries, especially a couple of dumb ones, there’s always someone smarter than you, not me of course, but Mrs. V. We know who you are. We have your real names, ages, address, phone number, email, we know where you go to school, your myspace pages, what kind of crappy techno music you like to create, and that one of you is missing the family dog and you live in your parents basement in Canada, and list goes on, we even have pictures of you.

10. It still sucks. But I learned how to protect my blog a little better, or at least have a back up if any other bored children decide to play around on the internet.

Thank you to everybody who sent emails of support. Wow. I want to specifically thank, the NPPA, Poynter, ThinkTankPhoto, NewsVideographer.com and Joe Weiss, and the folks from the NorthernShortCourse all of whom offered me new homes.

You are too many to thank one by one, so instead of answering your emails, I’ll answer by saying, “I gonna pick myself off the floor, put some locks on the doors and fire up the blog machine!” Be patient. Even with the back-ups things are a little messed up. You might see some posts without images or proper links, the rss feed might take a while to ‘re-start’ and little things like that. Also, the forums had to go. Why? Because that’s how the slackers got in. Also, it’s not a big loss because you folks aren’t big on forums anyway. This always surprised me. Also, many who emailed said you were lurkers, stop being a non-participant and give us your comments. It’s what helps make the site a community.

I really didn’t know how much the site meant to people. It’s one of the reasons I’m going to buy a case of Red Bull and spend the next week rebuilding. This has been a humbling experience. All I ever wanted to do was share and help if I could. I’m glad the blog did that for some of you.

Everyone asked, “what can I do to help?” Here’s the answer. If you are serious, then we’ll need a nice injection of content. How about writing something for the blog.
It can be anything you are passionate about. I’d love it to be about your experiences with a recent mulitmedia project. Was it hard to produce? Fun? How long did it take? How many people saw it? Something, anything will do. Then just email me the copy with a few images and I’ll post it.

Finally, I’m humbled. I learned tons. But I’m still pissed. We know who did it, they were sloppy. Very sloppy. We even have proof, because, as children do, they bragged about it. I’m trying to be forgiving and not call their parents (yes, we have their numbers).

Because every experience is an opportunity to create!

How to fix a Hack from richard koci hernandez on Vimeo.

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